


The Cleaver of Gold

by rawr_balrog



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, M/M, POV First Person, POV Second Person, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-23
Updated: 2011-08-23
Packaged: 2017-10-23 00:17:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rawr_balrog/pseuds/rawr_balrog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maglor and Maedhros, alone in the frozen woods shortly before the end. Written to answer a comment-fic meme prompt: <em>"And I will pretend it didn't hurt."</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cleaver of Gold

**Author's Note:**

> Hastily written and hastily edited. Also, I have difficulty writing from Maglor's point of view in any way that is not melodramatic.

I am bare, slung over a frozen log when you say it: “Hush, Canafinwë; Atar will hear you.” We are surrounded by a hundred leagues of sleeping forest, and our father has been dead for four yéni. Shards of ice dig into my bare knees and the heels of my palm, and I cling to the dead tree as if the hard soil will open up and consume me, and I know then that I have lost you.

You were my big brother: brilliant, bold, and red like fire. They said you were Fëanor’s true son; in the end, you inherited his madness, too. All the same, I bite my tongue and I obey you, just like I have always done. I have always been biting my tongue for you. Among other things.

Still, even if the sleeping trees are the only ones to whisper this morbid secret, with an arrangement like ours, silence remains the prudent choice. They overlooked it with the Ambarussa, but why not? If they shared a name and a womb, why not share a soul as well? You and I, however, they could not and would not overlook; not after everything else. I am cursed in many tongues for many things that I have wrought in this life, but I would not have Maedhros named in that litany. My love for you frays like dry hemp, but broken or not, by the Valar that you and I have forsaken, I need there to be one thing in my life that I do not regret.

Absently, I wonder what became of my breeches. Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind, but you were rougher than usual, and I don’t exactly want to gallop back into civilization as if my jewels were the only ones that really matter, especially in this weather. And gods, I realize bitterly, wouldn’t _that_ make everything easier?

Thinking about nudity and torn clothing is easier than thinking about torn skin, easier than how the strands of your copper hair fall over my shoulder and pool like blood on the snow and rotting wood. It’s easier than the way the wool of your tunic scratches my spine as you move behind me, and the way my bare toes catch the folds of the trousers wrinkled and bunched around the ankles of the boots you did not discard.

You pull away from me for a moment. My back is slick with sweat you left behind, and frigid air rushes to fill the space where you were. I can hear you breathing, but its heat does not brush against my neck. For a moment I can close my eyes, draw upon the sense memory of how it had felt. I can imagine your whole aura engulfing me, how the fire in our father’s eyes lit up your hair and your fëa and the whole world in your wake, but all of the dreams in the world cannot fill the yawning void that has opened between us now.

It is awfully cold out here, and you are not keeping me warm. Around us, the winter air stirs, empty and seeking. Ice shatters and tumbles from high branches, and one of our horses gnaws at dead sticks that crack and echo in the hollow air.

And then you lunge.

It’s always like this, but this time I am unprepared. You weren’t any more careful with me than you were with my possessions, filled with desperation for something I can’t quite articulate. It’s certainly not for me, nor for any of our brothers, least of all for poor Ambarussa, who had the daring to try what I was always too afraid to do. When you enter me, I grit my teeth and hiss, and if I bleed… well. With all that you and I have spilled over the course of our long centuries, what’s a few more drops? It is not as if I do not deserve it.

I hate this. I hate it so much, but the fact of the matter is that every time you exit me I feel that much emptier. How long until you dig a trench in me that you cannot fill? How many months and years has it been since you perished, since the oath that sings in our blood welled up and replaced the brother that I love? And if somehow, somewhere, those accursed stones one day passed out of existence altogether, would the unrelenting knot that you have tied within me finally be released?


End file.
